updated 04:55 pm EST, Tue December 11, 2007

Rogers hijacking webpages

Rogers, Canada's largest broadband provider, is attempting to insert its presence over otherwise unrelated websites, reports confirm. The issue first came to light thanks to a visitor to the blog of Lauren Weinstein, who noted that he encountered a Rogers message -- warning about an approaching download limit -- simply while visiting Google. Further inquiry with Rogers' VP of communications has confirmed the existence of a test program, designed to get messages to customers in a way other than e-mail or phone calls. "We're trying different things, and we'll test customer response," says VP Taanta Gupta.

The experiment has raised the ire of net neutrality advocates like Weinstein, who argue that it represents an interference where ISPs do not belong. "This is what Net Neutrality is about," Weinstein has said in an interview, "it's not just making sure that data is handled in a competitive and non-discriminatory manner, but it's also that the data that's sent is the data that you get -- that the content is unmodified, not with messages that are woven into your data stream."

Gupta defends the test, noting that Rogers currently lacks a standard notification procedure. "This is useful information for the customer to have," she says. [viaWired]